Feedback to staff on resident lifestyle. A descriptive analysis

Providing feedback has been found to affect the behavior of staff of school and community programs. The present article presents a descriptive analysis of feedback provided to staff members concerning the lifestyle of 33 participants in 18 community residential programs in Oregon. Staff from four cohorts of programs were trained to monitor the physically and socially integrated activities experienced by program participants, and to review those data at weekly meetings. Examination of the results before and after programs had used the monitoring system indicated increases in the average number of community activities experienced by participants, the average number of activities they did with community people, the size of their social networks, and the number of individuals they identified as friends. Results were discussed in terms of the role of feedback in improving community support, the need for further research for understanding staff behaviors responsible for observed gains, and the need to better understand the relationship between observed patterns of activities and individual quality of life.